July 2004 Ensign - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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a program can have a profoundly inspirational and positive
impact on audiences throughout the world.”
Music and the Spoken Word is broadcast on 2,000
radio, television, cable, and satellite stations on four
continents. Iain McKay, director of international media for
distributor Bonneville Communications, works with international
stations to air Music and the Spoken Word—a
program provided at no cost in exchange for airtime.
Through his work he has seen an interesting phenomenon:
stations will cancel the program in order to sell the
time slot to a commercial program, “but then a month or
so later they call me up, cap in hand, and say, ‘Is it possible
for us to get the choir back? We’ve had an outcry from our
audience,’ ” Brother McKay says.
“I sometimes think we members of the Church don’t
really appreciate the power of the choir because we hear
the choir all the time at conference,” says Brother Newell.
“And frankly, I was that way 15 years ago. But now being
associated with them, I realize the power and the strength
of the choir beyond the Church.”
Brother Newell and others have had experience after
experience of meeting people and receiving letters in which
listeners share their personal stories of peace, comfort, and
even conversion as a result of Music and the Spoken Word.
Mary R. Jurgaitis of Neillsville, Wisconsin, wrote
to the choir and shared an experience from her first
day of marriage: “We were married on Saturday, June 25,
1966. Well, at 7:30 A.M. on June 26, [I was] rudely awakened
on a Sunday morning with a radio between us on
the pillow. My husband of one day explained to me
that he had listened to [Music and the Spoken Word]
for years and planned to continue to do so.”
Above: The choir in appearances at the Salt Lake 2002
Olympic Winter Games (left) and in Moscow. Top insets (from
left): Music director Craig Jessop; associate music director
Mack Wilberg; organists John Longhurst, Clay Christiansen,
and Richard Elliott. Right: Certificate and medal presented to
the choir by the president of the United States.
Incensed, Mary banished her new husband to the nether
parts of the house so his program would not interrupt her
Sunday morning sleep, and they went on that way for a year
until they moved and lost the broadcast. However, Music
and the Spoken Word had ignited a curiosity about the
Church that led them to visit Temple Square in Salt Lake City
and the Hill Cumorah in New York. At their request, missionaries
eventually visited their home, and they were baptized.
“Now my relationship with the broadcasts of Music and
the Spoken Word is very different. . . . I am the one who
sets the alarm, and I am the one who makes sure [the
radio] is on the right station every Sunday morning.”
When former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite was invited to
be a special guest at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s annual
Christmas concert in December 2002, he canceled everything
on his schedule to attend. Music and the Spoken Word was
among his parents’ favorite programs, and he shared with the
audience his cherished memories of listening to the broadcast
with his parents on their old crystal radio. To share a
stage with a choir he loves because of Music and the Spoken
Word was “a thrill in a thrill-filled life,” Mr. Cronkite said.
For Myrna Fuller of Preston, Idaho, a particular broadcast
had a profound impact in the midst of a bitter trial. Sister
Fuller and her husband, Steven, awoke one September
Sunday morning to find their six-week-old son lying still and